10 Superman Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

It takes a brave company to kill off one of it's longest standing and most iconic characters, but that's just what DC did with 1993's 'Death of Superman'.

As stated elsewhere, it was a throwaway joke by Jerry Ordway that kicked it all off. While trying to figure out what they could do with Big Blue, as his sales were slipping further and further into the toilet, he quipped that perhaps they should just kill him and that, as they say, was that.

But how do you kill off someone as all-powerful as Superman? Well, you create someone just as tough and a thousand times meaner. Doomsday.

The fight between the two lasts for four issues, as they beat the holy hell out of each other all across Metropolis and its surrounding areas until, eventually, Superman defeats the big grey super-weapon, only to then succumbs to the injuries he has sustained.

Even though it's now common knowledge that no-one stays dead in comic books for long, at the time, it was thought that the Big Blue Boy Scout was permanently gone from the DC Universe, which makes his eventual return one of the most amazing resurrections in comic book history.